For decades, four nonprofit agencies have handled King County’s public defense cases. Sometime in the next year, King County will begin supervising the agencies. A 2011 court decision found that King County owes retirement benefits to current and past pub ...

A state program that provides poor people with household items like dental floss and dish soap continues to wither away. The Washington State Senate wants to cut Housing and Essential Needs (HEN), which pays emergency rent assistance directly to landlords ...

The denizens of the University District Safeway got the news the same way they always did: from a chair on the sidewalk. On May 6, two dozen white roses sat on a metal folding chair in front of the store entrance. Someone had affixed a paper sign that sai ...

Click to view larger Two prior felonies in 1989 and 1995 showed up on a background check of Markeletta Wilson when she tried to rent an apartment. The ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the tenant screening company on her behalf. Markeletta Wilson started s ...

Click to view all images Miles Partman took a shift outside Jeremy Griffin’s South Park home on May 22. Volunteers watched the house while Griffin went to his job as an ironworker at the South Park Bridge. Maria Arceo Gardner rests in one of the tents ere ...

When you’re the director of Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD), you serve the city’s most vulnerable people, but you answer to the mayor. That’s not always good for job security. In 2008, Alan Painter was appointed to HSD director by then-Mayor Gre ...